15世纪英格兰议会请愿书及法律文书中英文的始用

Blood, Brains and Bay-Windows: The Use of English in Fifteenth-Century Parliamentary Petition

英语作为英格兰的方言早已存在,但是英格兰人使用英文作为官方撰写语言却始于15世纪。此前英格兰的传统官方文字是法语或拉丁语,15世纪的议会请愿书及其法律文书率先启用英文表达,对于英文的规范与推广至关重要。选择英语或法语来撰写并非差异迥然,但在申诉暴行或遭受迫害的请愿书中,英语文本更能生动鲜明地表达请愿者的语气,请愿者可以更熟练地强化修辞效果、增加个人细节,以及使用更丰富的词汇来表达诉求,而这些手段在高度程式化的法语请愿书中却很难做到。此外,使用英文还可使请愿书在语言描述方面更为灵活生动,并更容易博得那些讲英语并负责判决的议会官员的同情与支持。一些法律文件使用英文也是同样的效果。

In the considerable body of scholarship which now exists on the emergence of English as a language of formal record and governmental process in the fifteenth century,the questions of why writers opted to use English and what impact their use of English made to the tone and function of records has received surprisingly little attention.Scholars for the most part adopt either one or the other of two contrasting points of view:that is,they either see English as a language that was entirely compatible and equal to the languages it replaced(mostly French,but sometimes Latin),or they ascribe to English qualities and characteristics which made it quite distinctive from the more established languages of record.Depending on which of these alternative viewpoints is taken,the choice of English,over French or Latin,either made little difference to how ideas and meaning were conveyed,or was vital in reconstituting purpose and impact.In this discussion my aim is to find a solution to this scholarly impasse.I consider how petitions written in English differed from petitions written in French(the traditional language of petitioning).I conclude that while for a great many petitions,the choice of French or English made little difference,for those petitions which complained about violence or persecution,the use of English had a clear and recordable impact on the tone of the complaint.This is because the use of English allowed petitioners to develop the rhetoric of their complaint,to add personal details and to use a broader range of colourful and descriptive vocabulary–in ways not usually found in French-language petitions.I suggest that these characteristics do not indicate that French was any less versatile than English,but that using English allowed petitioners to have a greater creative input into the how their petition was written,and for especially notorious crimes,this allowed them to tailor the language to fit more closely the interests and values of the mainly English-speaking authorities within parliament who passed judgements on their complaints.